


After the Storm

by orphan_account



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the last crackles of energy dissipated Sarah was left standing in the basement of Zeiracorp with a stunned James Ellison and the mutilated body of a cyborg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_q](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_q/gifts).



> Written for a_q for the Yuletide2010 challenge. I hope this is what you were looking for! Merry Christmas. :) Thanks to SB for the beta.

With a loud crack and a flash of light, John was gone.

As the last crackles of energy dissipated, Sarah was left standing in the basement of ZeiraCorp with a stunned James Ellison and the mutilated body of a cyborg. For a few moments, Sarah just stared at the spot where John had been standing.

In a state of shock, Sarah moved on auto-pilot and walked towards the exit. She vaguely heard a voice and somewhere in her mind she recognized it as Ellison, but ignored him and carried on out of the basement, out of ZeiraCorp and back into the real world.

Sarah wasn’t sure how she reached the safe house without crashing the car, but she drew up to it in one piece. Climbing from the car, Sarah made it to the front door and pushed it open. It was finally starting to sink in that no one else would be joining her. Charley was dead. Derek was dead. Cameron was god knows what or where and John was –

John. The floodgates opened and all the events of the past couple of days came crashing down. Sarah collapsed to her knees as it broke through the numbness that she would never see her son again. Tears pricked at her eyes. Even if she followed him to the future or a John Connor came back, it wouldn’t be her John.

It wouldn’t be her son, the boy that she’d held through his nightmares, trained in the jungles of South America to become the leader of the resistance, the boy who she’d given everything she had to protect.

She had no idea how far forward Weaver had sent them to chase a cyborg, whether the bitch had taken John through Judgement Day and dropped him in the middle of the war that they’d tried so desperately to prevent. And John had gone willingly, but not for Weaver’s sake.

 _“He’s got her chip. He’s got her.”_

She’d seen the indecision and desperation on John’s face when Sarah had stepped out of the machine’s range. He’d thought about staying, but in the end Cameron had won out and John had trusted the machine.

It had been coming. Sarah had been told by well-meaning do-gooders that at a certain age all children will choose someone else over their parents and that she should accept it. Sarah had watched John become closer first to Riley, and then Cameron. She’d never liked the way that John had responded to Cameron; the machine seemed to understand John and what he would become in a way that Sarah never would.

Sarah had known that one day she would lose John for good. It was the thanks she would get for pushing so hard to keep him safe. She had almost lost him once before when she’d been locked up, until the T-101 had come back to protect her son and John had realized that Sarah wasn’t crazy. She’d regained his trust and for two years they’d had a good life.

Sarah had met Charley, and for once they’d settled and John had thrived on the chance to be a ‘normal’ kid. John had always longed for normal, while Sarah didn’t fit it anymore. She’d been training and running for too long to ever completely relax.

It had been worth her own anxiety to see John truly happy for once, for the first time in his life. But it didn’t last; Sarah had never really believed it would. The nightmare had come again and they were on the run once more. John had changed a lot since then, developing into the man who would lead the rest of humanity against the machines. John had started to accept who he was destined to be. When Cromartie had first surfaced, John had begged her to fix things, not knowing what to do himself.

 _“I’m not who they think I am, some messiah. It might be you, but it’ll never be me, so you have to stop it.”_

He’d looked so desperate back then, too, and Sarah had promised that she would. Sarah had done everything she could to protect John from the apocalypse that was coming. But her best hadn’t been enough and Sarah suddenly felt at a loss for what to do next.

Ever since a resistance fighter from the future had saved her life and given her a child, Sarah’s entire life had centred around protecting John and preparing him for the future as Kyle Reese had told her to do. Now John was gone, and the driving force of Sarah’s existence with him.

She couldn’t grieve for John because he wasn’t dead. Or at least she didn’t think he was, but the truth was that Sarah would never know. But she also couldn’t lie around forever; she’d promised that she would stop Skynet, and she would.

There was electricity in the safe house and Derek had rigged a perimeter motion detector. It would stop anyone creeping up on the house undetected – you could never be too prepared when it came to the machines. Sarah flicked on the alarm, locked the door and went upstairs.

She undressed and stepped into the shower, leaning against the wall as the water washed away the grime and some of the stress of the past couple of days. Turning the water off, she wrapped a towel around herself and critically inspected her reflection in the mirror. John’s words from earlier echoed in her mind.

 _“Mom, are you sick? Cameron thinks you’re sick.”_

She had lost weight. But whether that was from the stress of the last few months – being shot, kidnapped and taken ill – or from something else, there was no way to know. When she’d found the transmitter, Sarah had been sure that was it, the cancer that Cameron had predicted. Even though it had turned out not to be, Sarah had not forgotten. Cameron had never said what type of cancer had killed her. Sarah knew that it could still come, and she had to fight it.

Not really hungry, but conscious of John’s comment that she’d lost weight, Sarah dressed and headed downstairs. There wasn’t a lot in the kitchen and she made a mental note to go shopping later. But a rummage through the cupboards produced a can of soup which she heated up.

Afterwards she curled up in bed, more exhausted than she ever remembered being, and thought over everything that had happened. Sarah had always been a woman of action, and she’d never needed anyone else to carry on. She wouldn’t let this change her. The next morning she would find a hospital out of town, somewhere they wouldn’t recognize her, and she would get a complete check up. One of their aliases had decent medical insurance, she’d use that one.

Then she would keep her promise to John. Sarah would find who built Skynet and she would destroy it. She couldn’t let Judgement Day come to pass.

She would keep him safe.


End file.
